Big Tech lobbying on AI regulation as industry races to harness … – Center for Responsive Politics

An OpenAI logo on a smartphone with a Chat GPT logo in the background. (Photo Illustration by Avishek Das/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

As the technology industry races to create tools harnessing generative artificial intelligence, the technology that powers AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Big Tech companies also rushed to K Street to weigh in on potential regulation of the novel technologies.

In the first three months of 2023, 123 companies, universities and trade associations lobbied the federal government on issues relating to artificial intelligence, an OpenSecrets analysis of federal lobbying disclosures found. They collectively spent roughly $94 million lobbying on AI and other issues from January through March 2023, though it is not possible to determine how much went to lobby issues specifically related to AI.

The number of entities lobbying on issues related to AI boomed in recent years, from single digits a decade ago to 30 in 2017 to 158 last year, an OpenSecrets analysis found.

Big Tech companies Amazon, Microsoft, Oracle, Googles parent company Alphabet Inc., IBM and Meta were among those that reported lobbying on AI issues. Silicon Valley giants Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft laid off thousands of employees in recent months to, in part, focus on their in-house AI projects, though teams focused on ethical AI development were among those laid off.

Microsoft announced earlier this year that they were planning to invest $10 billion into ChatGPTs creator, OpenAI, in an effort to integrate OpenAIs technology into their Bing search engine, Azure cloud service and GitHub coding tools, among other uses. Microsoft, which invested in OpenAI in 2019 and in 2021, spent $2.4 million on lobbying according to quarterly reports, including on issues related to AI and facial recognition.

In an effort to keep up with rivals Microsoft and OpenAI, Google recently rolled out its own artificially intelligent chatbot dubbed Bard. The chatbot was released in March despite Google describing it as an early experiment, and a Google employee who tested the tool dubbed Bard a pathological liar, Bloomberg reported. Alphabet Inc. spent $3.4 million in lobbying from January through March this year, including on issues relating to AI principles, generative AI, research and development on AI, machine learning and quantum information science.

Top executives of Alphabet Inc., Microsoft, OpenAI and AI startup Anthropic will meet with Vice President Kamala Harris and other top administrators today to discuss AI related concerns, including misinformation, bias and privacy, Reuters reported.

ChatGPT attracted U.S. legislators attention after becoming the fastest growing consumer application in history just two months after it launched, reaching 100 million monthly users in January. In April, President Joe Biden said that whether AI is dangerous remains to be seen, but it was the companies responsibility to make sure their products were safe.

Meta was among the tech giants that shifted priorities to catch up with generative AI after an underwhelming metaverse initiative two years ago. The social network conglomerate which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp has laid out plans to integrate AI powered tools such as image generation and artificially intelligent chat across its platforms. Meta spent $4.6 million in lobbying expenses in the first quarter of the year, including for continued conversations on Artificial Intelligence, among other issues such as cybersecurity, election integrity and misinformation policies.

Software giant Oracle spent $3.1 million to lobby on AI and machine learning policy, research and development, among other issues related to defense, the supply chain and workforce. The Texas-based company has become one of the industry frontrunners in the race to catch up with ChatGPT, providing cloud computing for AI startups.

In April, Amazon announced that it will also be joining the generative AI race by making two new AI language models available through Amazon Web Services, the companys cloud platform. The company spent roughly $5 million to lobby Congress in the years first three months on issues including AI and cloud security.

The auto company General Motors, which announced plans to integrate ChatGPT into its vehicles as driver assistants in March, lobbied on issues related to AI, electrification and autonomous vehicles, among other things. Their total spending on lobbying for the first quarter of 2023 was $5.5 million.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the largest lobbying group in the country representing business interests, spent $19 million on lobbying in the years initial quarter. Its lobbying efforts included, but were not limited to, establishing task forces on AI and financial technology in the House Committee on Financial Services, implementing the National Artificial Intelligence Act, drafting automated vehicle bills, and related to other national AI related bills and executive orders as well as relating to international AI policy and the European Unions Artificial Intelligence Act.

Lobbyists for insurance companies Zurich Insurance Group and State Farm Insurance also reported lobbying to further AI discussions this year. State Farm specifically lobbied for Congressional efforts to better understand commercial use of artificial intelligence and its impact on consumers.

Higher educational institutions such as Carnegie Mellon University lobbied to support the Army AI Integration Center and research related to Distributed AI applications for defense, among other issues, according to disclosures. At least ten other universities including Case Western Reserve, Vanderbilt, Harvard and Stanford also spent on lobbying around AI research related issues.

But as tech giants and other groups go all in on AI systems, some industry insiders fear that the technology is scaling up too fast, before it is properly understood and can be controlled.

In late March, over a thousand tech leaders, professors and researchers working in artificial intelligence signed an open letter warning that AI technologies pose profound risks to society and humanity. The letter urged AI labs to pause the development of their most advanced technologies so they can be better understood. The letter was published just two weeks after the San Francisco start-up OpenAI unveiled GPT-4, the latest version of their chatbot ChatGPT.

Powerful AI systems should be developed only once we are confident that their effects will be positive and their risks will be manageable, the letter by the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit organization, read. The Future of Life Institute spent $50,000 in the first quarter of 2023 to lobby for provisions and funding that would ensure trustworthy artificial intelligence development. The nonprofit is backed by Elon Musk, who was one of OpenAIs co-founders and previously invested in the company before a fallout with its other founders. Musk has since been working to launch his own AI start-up, X.AI, to take on OpenAI.

The tech ethics group Center for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Policy called on the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to open an investigation into OpenAI and stop it from releasing new ChatGPT models in March before guidelines were established, dubbing GPT-4 biased, deceptive, and a risk to privacy and public safety. The group also urged AI regulations including laws to ensure algorithmic transparency.

Geoffrey Hinton, who pioneered the neural technology that became the foundation for todays AI systems and recently quit his over-a-decade-long job at Google to warn about the risks of the technology he created, said in a New York Times interview that he feared the AI race between tech companies will keep escalating without some sort of regulation.

The disruptive technology can flood the internet with fake imagery and text in the short run, and can later replace human workers, Hinton warned. IBM, which spent $1.5 million to lobby issues related, but not limited to, emerging technologies including blockchain, cloud computing, 5G, AI and facial recognition in the years first quarter, made headlines on Monday for pausing their hiring to replace 7,800 workers with AI in coming years.

Down the road, Hinton fears, AI can slip outside our control and potentially threaten humanity by learning and executing malicious behavior that its creators didnt expect.

I dont think they should scale this up more until they have understood whether they can control it, Hinton told New York Times.

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Big Tech lobbying on AI regulation as industry races to harness ... - Center for Responsive Politics